“All the boys I’ve coached, from the beginning of the program, through my own sons, through the boys we had this year,” Dunlap’s raspy voice cracked, and he paused. “They’ve all been family.”

The 19-year head coach at Eastland is the longest tenured boys basketball coach in the NUIC. His fourth-place finish in the state Saturday along with the same title three years ago has also made him the most successful in recent years.

At age 50, he’s five years away from retiring as a physical education teacher at Eastland. But coaching, that’s something he’s not giving up anytime soon.

“He just loves the game,” said Tony’s wife of almost 25 years, Colleen. “I could see him coaching even when he’s done teaching.”

Colleen is actually the person Eastland should thank for bringing Tony to the school in the first place. A native of Bellevue, Iowa, Dunlap was an assistant at a successful program in Pittsfield for five years in the early 1990s. The expectations were for him to become the head coach, but Colleen, whose family is from Warren, wanted to come home after the couple’s two sons were born.

“She said she was going, and if I wanted to come with them, I’d better get in the car,” Dunlap said with a smile.

Conveniently, the coaching position at Eastland was open in 1994. Dunlap stepped right in.

“The rest is history,” Dunlap said. “I bleed blue and orange now. I’ll stay as long as they’ll have me.”

Dunlap’s first team went 15-10. His second team was 22-4 and won the program’s second regional title. He’s had just two losing seasons in 19 years, and this was the sixth straight 20-win season for the Cougars.

“The thing about his teams is they are always very well prepared,” said Brian Benning, who retired as Dakota’s head basketball coach this year and coached against Dunlap’s teams for the past decade.

“His teams always play hard for him, and that’s why he’s had so much success.”

Of the dozens and dozens of successful athletes who have come through his program, his two most memorable were his own sons, Tony (21) and Brad (19). Tony was a senior and Brad was a junior on Eastland’s first team that reached the state finals in 2010.

But when the Dunlap boys left, the father did not. Unlike so many coaches who choose to resign from the challenging and time-consuming job after their children graduate, Tony Dunlap stayed.

“We knew how much he loves us and wants us to succeed,” Eastland senior Austin Hansen said. “We told him (after Brad and Tony graduated) that we wanted him to stay. He’s like a father to us, too.”

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He’s remained a coach even as his own sons are now playing college basketball — Tony at Eureka College and Brad at Wartburg in Waverly. That’s where he credits help from his assistants, including Larry Tigges, Scott Hartman and Kraig Kniss.

“It’s because of them stepping in to help that we’ve been able to run all over the place and watch my boys,” Dunlap said. “I’ve been really lucky.”

Dunlap said the success he’s had is all because of others — his wife, his assistants, his administration, the families of the athletes, and the hard work his kids have put in for him.

“You can just tell he cares so much for the kids,” Eastland principal Monica Burkholder said. “The kids are most important to him. He’d be the first one to give all the credit to the kids.”

Which is exactly what he did after his team’s 44-42 loss to Nokomis in the third-place game at the Peoria Civic Center Saturday.

In the post-game press conference, Dunlap talked about the character of his leading scorer, Dalton Shaner. He also listed all his seniors — Hansen, Ty Hartman, Tyler Mueller and Adam Blair — and talked individually about how much he was going to miss them.